1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of computer architecture and more particularly in the field of computer architecture for a high speed digital signal processor.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Computer architectural designs may be visualized in terms of four basic categories: namely, (1) the single instruction, single data stream (SISD) systems such as the unit processor, (2) the single instruction, multiple data stream processors (SIMD) such as parallel processors or associative processors, (3) the multiple instruction, single data stream svstems (MISD) such as the pipeline processor, and the (4) multiple instruction, multiple data stream systems (MIMD) such as the multiprocessor or multicomputer. Manv types of computer architecture may be found to exist within the above categories with the particular architecture designed to solve particular types of computational problems.
In the field of signal processing there is a general requirement for a physically small and light-weight computing device, such as a microcomputer, capable of high throughput for providing real-time processing of data. Many of the high throughput prior art machines are ill suited for such purposes because of their large physical size, large power requirements or both.
Signal processing apparatus utilizing specially designed hardware logic suffers from an inherent inflexibility of not being able to utilize the same hardware for different types of computational problems. Additionally, such special purpose hardware, because of its limited applicability, is cost ineffective from the R&D point of view. Programmable microprocessors are generally too slow to be utilized in many fields of signal processing especially where high data throughput is required.